Wednesday, September 24, 2014

This and That

We have had some really nice fall days recently. Perfect for being in the garden. Not that there is a lot to do there. I'm half done with screening my compost and am now bored with it so I'm avoiding the rest. I should finish, but instead I took a bike ride. This morning though I did get a few things done in the garden.

When I planted up my front planter, I didn't use an ornamental sweet potato. I used a real one - Garnet. I had bought a chrysanthemum to replace it, so it was time for the potatoes to come out. One pretty Garnet plant gave me 3lbs 14oz. Not bad for an ornamental plant. It makes me think I should put sweet potatoes in more spots that need a trailing plant. Like the rock wall garden in front of the zinnias. Decorate and eat at the same time. Sadly the chrysanthemum is a bit small for that pot. And I knocked off a huge branch. Oh well.

The spinach germinated a bit patchily. Usually I just don't worry about it. But since I had some that were too thick I decided to transplant. Usually I won't do this as transplanted spinach doesn't do as well. But it won't hurt. If they die I didn't lose anything. Just spinach plants I would have thinned out anyway.

I had to take out some plants in the cabbage patch. The Napa cabbage is not doing well. It has NEVER done well here. Well one spring, but that is it. I will not grow it again and just grow the Michihili cabbage that does do well. This fall it seems infected with something. One seem fine, but the other two were pretty bad off so I had to take most of the leaves off. I decided I'd take what I could and blanch and freeze it. I'm not sure it would last in the fridge. The one good one I'll use fresh over the next week. I also had to take out two kohlrabi that were getting too big. I'm hoping they aren't woody. I'll find out when I eat them. They at least will last. I've weighed them and put them in the tally, but I may have to remove them later if they aren't edible, or only party edible.

One of my doctors thinks all my health issues (of which I have a ton) are because of a leaky gut. I'm inclined to agree. So now I'm not just nightshade, legume, and mushroom free. I also am not eating gluten and casein (though the trace amounts in butter I'm deeming acceptable however mostly I'll use ghee). And no sugar, just small bits of honey or maple syrup for things like salad dressings. Sigh. The quiche above is a gluten free, milk free, cheese free quiche. I made it with some homemade turkey sausage, kale, green onions, and zucchini. I thought I'd miss the cheese a lot, but I didn't. It was very tasty. But it was way too rich. I used coconut milk instead of regular milk and the fat content of even low fat coconut milk is too much for me - well at least with pie crust. Next time I'm going to use part coconut milk and part almond milk and see how that works.

9 comments:

That is an amazing yield for the potted sweet potato. I wasn't planning to grow sweet potatoes next year, but having them as an ornamental in a pot is such a great idea, I may just do that. That pie looks delicious - I can't believe it is cheese & milk free!

I have tried that Napa Cabbage (we call it simply "Chinese leaves"), but although it grew well enough, the slugs and snails loved it too much, and it was soon reduced to "lattice work", so I decided not to grow it again - which is a shame, because we love it. Do you think yours has a fungal disease? Those red dots are a bit like rust!

That quiche looks yummy, even 'healthy', ha. And I never thought about having an ornamental sweet potato and reaping the edible benefits at the end. Great idea. I'm about to dump our 'trash cans' with sweet potatoes growing in them and see what comes out.

I get that same problem in my napa cabbages. I also think it's something fungal so it's a good thing I didn't get any going for this fall, fungal diseases are running rampant in my garden this year. I love the idea of growing sweet potatoes in a pot as an ornamental. I only eat them on rare occasions so a few pots would give me all I need.

I have a wine barrel planter on the deck I plant with flowers every year. Maybe I will try using a sweet potato for the foliage accent, that's a great idea. By the way, Blue Diamond makes an unsweetened almond-coconut milk blend that is delicious, if you can find it in the stores.

Good luck on the food/health management - not easy, I'm sure. Great to have the internet these days to see how other people manage this. I've been thinking of making quiche with a spaghetti squash crust - so many ideas!

About Me

I've been gardening for almost three decades now, ever since my husband and I bought our first house. Every garden has been different. The first was small and the soil was almost pure sand. The second was larger and I had heavy clay. The third and current one which is just outside of Boston, is by far the largest even though the lot is by far the smallest. Since we bought the house new, we designed the landscaping ourselves, and the soil we added was fairly good. My challenge here is the location. We are so close to our neighbors that their houses can shade the garden.